Thursday, November 14, 2019

Conscience and the deontic logic of attempts

When people talk of the value of obedience to conscience, it often makes it sound like there is some sort of a relationship to a mysterious faculty with a mysterious authority.

And that may all be true. But there is also a rather simple and deflationary but still, I think, useful way to think of obedience to conscience.

When I obey my conscience I am just trying to do what I ought thing. There is nothing particularly mysterious about what is right about that. If I ought to do A, I ought to try to do A. I ought to honor my parents. So, I also ought to try to honor them. Similarly, I ought to do what I ought, so I ought to try to do what I ought.

And with respect to the duty to try to do what I ought, it doesn’t matter that due to a mistake on my part I will be unable to do what I ought. That I have wrongly written down my mother’s phone number does not excuse me from trying to call her on her birthday. I ought to dial that number, because not dialing that number would be constitute a failure to try to call her, given my belief that it’s her number. Similarly, even if I am mistaken in thinking that I ought to do B, I still ought to do B, because a failure to do B would be constitutive of a failure to try to do what I ought, given my belief that B is what I ought to do.

(This is all a little less trivial when we realize that the duty to do one’s duty is actually a bit controversial. One might think that one only has first order duties, and lacks the second order duty to see to it that one fulfills the first order duties. But that would, I think, be mistaken. If I know that partaking of alcohol would cause me to neglect my first order duties, I thereby have a second order duty to avoid such partaking.)

6 comments:

Philip Rand said...
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Philip Rand said...

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Philip Rand said...

Therefore, the logical trajectory of conscience and deontic logic attempts require that time be considered a real variable.

Therefore, B-Theory of time is incorrect .... interesting method of disproving B-theory...

Helen Watt said...

"even if I am mistaken in thinking that I ought to do B, I still ought to do B, because a failure to do B would be constitutive of a failure to try to do what I ought, given my belief that B is what I ought to do."

That sounds more plausible with factual mistakes like ringing the wrong number than with moral mistakes. Re the latter, why not say rather that there are two things I ought NOT to do:
(1.) B (which is wrong - though I don't know this), and
(2.) Not-B in bad conscience - i.e. while I wrongly believe B is the right thing to do.

Once we sever the link between wrongdoing and culpability it becomes easy to say that I may be innocently incapable on my own of doing the right thing at the moment - because I am incapable of appreciating what is in fact the right thing to do. I may be capable of trying to do the right thing, whatever that is, but still not capable of actually doing what's right in good conscience in my current frame of mind.

This is not to deny that 'conscientiousness' is a virtue - the virtue that rightly leads you not to act against your conscience, but also sadly leads you to do the objectively wrong thing when your conscience hands out incorrect information. (Just as courage might sadly lead you to do something stupid if you're misinformed about e.g. the justice of a war.)

Alexander R Pruss said...

I perhaps shouldn't have said that I ought to do B. I should have said that I ought to try to do B.

Helen Watt said...

But if B is itself wrong, isn't it wrong (even if not necessarily culpable) to try to do B?